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Comment by sneak | Hacker News Reader

I lived this lifestyle for about two years, and the biggest problem I ran into was that Airbnb has terrible, terrible customer service. If the property owner/manager fucks you over (I had many who demanded I sign additional agreements I had never seen or reviewed after paying and arriving at night to sleep), Airbnb generally won't do anything about it.

That and dirty, dusty, allergen-filled rentals. I never thought of myself as an especially clean or fussy person, but after those years I came to realize I am in the top 90-95% of people for cleanliness.

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I've stayed in over fifty Airbnb in the last three years. Only three haven't worked out (misleading apartment, mouse-poop kitchen, unresponsive host). Each time Airbnb has sorted me out with a refund, called me to discuss the problem, helped finding an alternative place, and providing a voucher to cover any price gap.

I stayed at a place in Switzerland where we had a backed up drainage system due to the apartment upstairs flushing makeup wipes. The host accused us of flushing baby wipes (we use reusable cotton ones), left us with a bath full of sewer water hoping we'd pay to fix it.

Then, when the lady in the apartment upstairs had her shower in the evening, the toilet overflowed, spilling out into the living area, into the toddler's room, out the door, dripping down the stairs.

Not an ounce of help from AirBnB. Got a couple of callbacks from a call centre that sounded like it was in India, but there was no action of any kind. Got a negative review from the host (amongst many other things, she was upset that we weren't grateful enough that someone came around to clean up the mess her negligence at the first report of backed up drainage had caused), and I closed my account. I will never use AirBnB again and I will tell this story to everyone who mentions them for as long as I live.

A 5% failure rate seems pretty high for something like this. I've never had a stay at a hotel where any problem wasn't immediately worked out by the front desk giving me a different room.

Do you mean top 5-10%? Top 95% means 5% of people are less clean that you :)

Oops. This is what I get for attempting to reduce my caffeine tolerance.

95% caffeine tolerance? :))

Maybe he meant percentile.

I've only had a serious issue once, and 15 minutes later, after a short call with customer support I had full refund and $400 voucher on top.

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